Are You Able to Solve It? That Overlooked Netherlands Creation Which Forged our Modern World
One can find many contenders to claim the title of “world’s most significant invention.” The wheel. The printing press. The steam engine.
According to a new book, however, that title belongs to the mechanised sawmill conceived by Dutch inventor Cornelis Corneliszoon in 1593.
“Before mechanised cutting, constructing a modest trading ship required around ten sawyers laboring over three months,” notes Jaime Dávila. “With wind-driven sawmills, the same quantity of processed timber could be manufactured in less than seven days.”
Thanks to their rapid mechanical saw, that converted logs into planks using virtually no human effort, Dutch builders were able to build vessels more quickly compared to anyone else, an advantage that unleashed one hundred years of Netherlands naval, financial as well as cultural dominance in Europe and the world.
The Original True Industrial Machine
The inventor's lumber mill, contends the writer, represented “mankind’s first true factory machine.” A windmill rotated a gear. One component transformed the rotary motion into up-and-down motion for the cutting blade. Another component transformed the rotary motion into a sideway’s movement feeding the log toward the cutter. A geared mechanism shifted the log ahead a measured step per stroke.
“Every component was simple on its own. The Dutchman’s genius lay in how to combine these parts so the machine operated in a precisely synchronized order, cutting with each downward stroke and advancing on every return stroke. This constituted an astonishingly intelligent application of fundamental components.”
A fact that leads us to the current challenge. I’d like you to reinvent one of the fundamental ideas underpinning this historic machine.
Round and Up
Design a machine that turns rotary motion into up-and-down motion. You have these items only: A spinning wheel. Two pins. Two bars. A “guide”, which is a cylinder or housing into which one of the bars will fit perfectly. (Consider that you can put things on a base, so the parts don’t collapse.)
I’ll be back at 5pm UK featuring the solution.
Meanwhile, PLEASE NO HINTS. Rather, feel free to propose (less celebrated) candidates for the planet’s most impactful invention.
